


And Taken Away Your Name

by vextant



Series: Happy Steve Bingo 2018 Fills [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Gen, Mission Fic, Misuse and Abuse of Musical Instruments, Steve kicking ass in a tux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/pseuds/vextant
Summary: The stage curtains are on fire. It wasn’t really the agreed-upon signal, but Steve’s honestly just glad that Bucky was awake enough to remember to sneak off during the solo. Right now, though, he needs to move.—A fill for the prompt "Bow Tie" for the Happy Steve Bingo 2018.





	And Taken Away Your Name

_**1944** _

 

The stage curtains are on fire. It wasn’t really the agreed-upon signal, but Steve’s honestly just glad that Bucky was awake enough to remember to sneak off during the solo. Right now, though, he needs to  _ move _ . 

Steve is suddenly an exceptionally well-dressed salmon swimming upstream; everybody in the crowd is rushing for the back of the theater and he just needs to get to the stage. It’s mass panic, worse than a battlefield, closer to the chaos of liberating that first factory in Kreischberg — except these are not prisoners of war hungry for freedom, these are the richest of the richest civilians desperately fleeing before their handspun lace and embroidered silk handkerchiefs start to singe. He tries to sidestep a well-dressed woman, who whacks him in the face with an ivory-and-lace fan and curses at him in a language he doesn’t know before hurrying off.

Flames have started to lick at the stage itself, eating away at the proscenium arch. He hopes Bucky’s found a nest up there somewhere — the mission would not do if somebody got away because their overwatch was busy roasting. Dum-Dum, Monty, and Morita should be on the ground for crowd control, even though at the moment Steve’s having a hard time picking them out of the fleeing crowd. He thinks he sees Dugan’s mustache lurking in to the side of one of the aisles. He hopes he does. They need to get everybody out — all the civilians, anyway, the idea of having three pairs of boots on the ground is so that they can see if anybody suspicious tries to make a break for it. Gabe and Dernier should be making their way to the booth right now as an extra precaution, even though neither of them have rifles so they wouldn’t be able to really stop anybody important-looking that they saw leaving.

Not that they’d been briefed on names or faces to keep an eye out for anyway. The whole plan is to confiscate a  _ weapon _ . What kind of weapon, you ask? When Steve asked that same question in the pathetic excuse of a briefing, he wasn’t given schematics, or identifying details, or anything useful, no.  _ We think it’s sonic _ , Howard Stark had said definitively, and then added,  _ Some kind of localized, weaponized sound _ . 

_ We know what sonic means _ , Steve had snapped, just as bitter then as he is now. The whole thing had been unsurprisingly vague and unhelpful, even for Howard. 

But where better to test a sonic weapon than at an opera? The whole damn building’s already designed for it. The SSR’s best guess was that the weapon is wired into the speaker system somehow, which doesn’t make any damn sense since Steve can hear that the orchestra’s still playing — 

The orchestra’s still playing. 

He needs to get to the pit. 

Steve doesn’t know if they’re the signal or the weapon itself or what, but there are times where his brain makes a call too fast for him to understand why even though he knows that it’s the right one. This is one of those times. 

No orchestra keeps playing with this kind of chaos happening around them, and this isn’t the HMS Titanic so they’ve got to be under some kind of orders. 

He races up the aisle — thankfully mostly clear at this point. His natural speed is helped by the angle of the floor, a gentle slope that lowers as he gets closer to the stage. There’s no open pit — Steve takes a chance and hopes they’re right below. 

His shield isn’t with him — it would’ve been too obvious, he knows that, but he’s really wishing for it now as he blocks his head with his arm and plows shoulder-first into the half wall beneath the stage. 

Suddenly, his feet aren’t beneath him. He expected that — he’s taken enough theater tours in his brief stint as a pair of dancing tights to know that orchestra pits, if they’re not open, are set at a lower level than the floor beside the stage. Shoulder-first, he rolls.

When he springs up he comes face-to-face with — with a  _ much _ larger pit orchestra than he expected. It’s a small venue, rather intimate as operas go. Steve was expecting ten, maybe fifteen pieces based on the limited soundtrack he heard in the first half, but there’s at least thirty people down here. Most of them are scattering out from his sudden entrance, with about half a dozen sticking around to gawk at him. 

There’s also no conductor. The musicians have instruments, even the ones making a break for it, but not a one is playing — though the music continues to swell outside. 

He made the wrong call. But if the orchestra is a recording, then where’s this mysterious weapon?

Steve feels a dam break in his chest, one he didn’t even know was there — and all of a sudden he feels very,  _ very _ angry. 

There’s no time to think about the weapon or the mission, because the closest musicians’ wielding his clarinet like a baseball bat. It’s easy enough to duck the swing. Steve grabs the guy by his collar and hauls him forward. The pin on his collar glints, even in the low light — HYDRA. Of  _ course _ . 

He doesn’t feel bad about tossing the guy across the room. In the same motion, something large and wooden comes crashing down onto his back — Steve feels the wood crack and splinter. Hopefully Howard doesn’t want the tux back. 

There’s suddenly a thick metal wire digging into his neck — it must’ve been a cello or a violin or something — and someone’s leaped onto his back. He pulls at it with both hands and manages to slice one of his palms open as he struggles. Two more have decided to start tearing his hands away from his throat. Another guy — a big one, tall like Steve just not as wide — is charging towards them from the other side of the pit. The others are scrambling to load sidearms, unscrew music stands, anything they can use as weapons. 

Steve grins. They’re woefully underprepared for him and his team. He hopes the other guys are having as much fun as he’s about to. 

Any day he can kick HYDRA’s ass is a good day. 

The guys hanging onto his arms are the easiest to shake off — one gets thrown into the conductor’s stand, Steve doesn’t see where the other guy goes. He backs up fast, bodily slamming the fellow on his back into the wooden wall of the pit. The grip on his neck loosens, but there’s no time to enjoy being able to breathe again. Steve lets the unconscious man slip to the ground. He dusts off his suit jacket.

“They told me you might come.  _ Captain America _ .” The big guy sneers the title like a curse. Steve’s used to it, but it still makes him want to turns the guy’s face into a pancake. Gotta be Allied to poke fun at the Star-Spangled Man, sorry folks, that’s the rules. 

“Glad I could make it.” Steve scans him quick as he can. Standard boxer’s stance, spiked knuckles, dominate right hand. Looks like he’s got a lot of power, but no footwork to back it up. “Thought my invitation might’ve gotten lost.”

“Suppose we should have sent a casket instead.” The guy’s hesitant to take the first swing. He’s buying time with flat jokes and bad footwork. Behind him, a second goon raises a pistol to shoot. Steve barely ducks in time. 

Steve takes advantage and charges forward in the duck, tackling Big Fella into the goon with the pistol. They all down in a heap — Steve is the first back on his feet. 

“If you knew what was good for you, you’d stay down.” Steve says. His pulls his own little pistol out the back of his waistband. It’s small, sure — only really the size of his palm — but it’s hard to find in pat-downs while still packing a punch. Usually it’s Peggy’s, but she lets him borrow t when he’s got to go undercover while the requirement that he brings it back in one piece. 

He knows the guy’s not going to stay down as soon as the words leave his mouth. Pistol Goon is out cold, but Big Fella is already working on getting his feet under him again. 

Steve hears his cufflink radio crackle — “ _ Cap? Cap, come in, I’ve got it! _ ”

It’s Gabe, from the booth. The walkie-talkie range wouldn’t reach much farther than that, no matter how much juice Howard poured into it. 

Steve keeps the gun and an eye on Big Fella, but presses his own cufflink to answer. “I’m a little busy.”

There’s another moment of silence, and then Monty’s voice comes over, a little stronger than Gabe’s. “ _ Captain, what’s your location? Your boss is here and wants to know _ .”

He kicks Big Fella in the face. To be honest, he’s happy to do it. Steve flicks the safety on the little gun as he picks his way of the door he made on the way in. 

Peggy’s at the top of the aisle chatting with Gabe and Howard. Behind them, near the door to the booth, is a large stack of — record players? That’s what they look like anyway: players with their lids closed. Maybe just a large stack of consumer radios? There’s a few agents running back and forth from the booth, ferrying equipment. When one comes down with a component whose wires glow bright blue, Steve knows they’ve found the right thing. 

Howard takes immediate notice as well. He snaps, “Hey! You, be careful with that, do you have any idea what you’re carrying?”

Steve watches Howard bite the poor private’s head off, and he’s so amused by it that he doesn’t notice Peggy looking right at him. 

“Captain.” She says crisply. He snaps into attention and a brief feeling of  _ ooh, you’re in Trouble _ flutters in his chest, even though he has no idea what he might’ve actually done wrong. Peggy seems to sense this, that maybe she’s started off a little too harsh, because she tries again. “Steve. Did you . . . did you go through a wall?”

Oh. Yeah, Steve can imagine that he probably looks like a mess. 

“Kind of?” It comes out as sort of a question. He glances behind him to the gaping hole beneath the stage and the cloud of sawdust still half-hanging in the air. Bucky and Dugan are helping a couple of the younger agents stamp out the flames while more climb ladders with buckets and damp rags to douse the proscenium. All in all, the theater doesn’t seem too damaged — but Steve knows that getting the Allies to pay for it will be a hassle unto itself. 

Peggy laughs. “Christ, Steve.”

“Hey, the fire wasn’t me. I’m — this is going to sound pathetic, but I almost couldn’t — control myself? Once I made it close to the stage, I just wanted to bust heads.” 

“Sounds about right.” Howard chimes in from the stack of electronics. “Layered sonic programmed. It’s designed to make people agitated. This was probably a test of some kind that we foiled.”

“Yes,  _ we _ .” Peggy says. Steve can hear that she’s about two seconds away from rolling her eyes. Howard either didn’t her or is deliberately ignoring the comment. 

Steve laughs. “Yeah, well. Well done, team. You have anything for me to change into?”

“What’s the matter, Cap, I thought you liked monkey suits?” Morita chuckles as he comes down the stairs with an armful of cables. 

“Agent Carter. I’d like to request that my team only runs black-tie missions from now on. Starch the suits to hell and back, we can take it.”

Morita doesn’t seem very amused, but it gets a chuckle out of Peggy. “Let’s see what we can do for you, Captain.”

“Uh-uh!” Howard cuts in. “Let the strongman move the boxes first. Come on, hop to it, there’s a truck waiting outside.”

Steve sighs dejectedly, but finds himself smiling as he makes his way over to the equipment and hefts half a stack onto each shoulder. It’s heavier than he expected, but he can handle it. 

Tomorrow’s a new day. A new mission, maybe a new country. The SSR is a small operation, especially his own six-man squad. They always run the risk of something going wrong, someone getting hit and not being able to shake it. The thoughts keep him up at night sometimes, and he knows he’s not the only one. This mission, though, was an uncharacteristic success. Nobody died — nobody even got shot, to his knowledge — and the original plan (if you could call  _ that _ a plan) went off without a hitch. They stopped HYDRA, again, and that victory feels necessary after month after futile months chasing Schmidt around the continent. 

Right now, he’s looking forward to a shower — it doesn’t even have to be warm, he’s an easy man to please — a hot meal, and a long nap. A good end to a good day. For today, Steve is content. 

Tomorrow, they kick HYDRA’s teeth in. 

**Author's Note:**

> > The title is from the song Secret Agent Man.   
> > The curtains on fire + mass fleeing from the theater is blatantly ripped from Inglorious Basterds.   
> > "Overwatch" is the period-appropriate, US-Army appropriate word for sniper.  
> > As a media historian, there is no way I could think of to explain the Commandos' cufflink radios actually working with existing 1944 technology. Please roll with it.   
> > A number of nations are actively developing and/or have deployed weaponized sound, inside and outside of the armed forces. If I remember correctly, it is classified USW (ultra-sonic weaponry) in the United States. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
